“He must have money—­of course he must have money,” she was saying, feverishly, to herself.  “But I’ll find ways.  Why should he marry yet—­for years?  It would be only hampering him.”

Again she paused before the mirrored wall; and again imagination evoked upon the glass the same white and threatening image—­her own near kinswoman—­the child of her mother’s sister!  How strange!  Where was the little gossamer creature now—­in what safe haven of money and family affection, and all the spoiling that money brings?  From the climbing paths of her own difficult and personal struggle Julie Le Breton looked down with sore contempt on such a degenerate ease of circumstance.  She had heard it said that the mother and daughter were lingering abroad for a time on their way home from India.  Yet was the girl all the while pining for England, thinking not of her garden, her horse, her pets, but only of this slim young soldier who in a few minutes, perhaps, would knock at Lady Henry’s door, in quest of Aileen Moffatt’s unknown, unguessed-of cousin?  These thoughts sent wild combative thrills through Julie’s pulses.  She turned to one of the old French clocks.  How much longer now—­till he came?

“Her ladyship would like to see you, miss.”

The voice was Dixon’s, and Julie turned hurriedly, recalling all her self-possession.  She climbed some steep stairs, still unmodernized, to Lady Henry’s floor.  That lady slept at the back of the house, so as to be out of noise.  Her room was an old-fashioned apartment, furnished about the year Queen Victoria came to the throne, with furniture, chintzes, and carpet of the most approved early Victorian pattern.  What had been ugly then was dingy now; and its strong mistress, who had known so well how to assimilate and guard the fine decorations and noble pictures of the drawing-rooms, would not have a thing in it touched.  “It suits me,” she would say, impatiently, when her stout sister-in-law pleaded placidly for white paint and bright colors.  “If it’s ugly, so am I.”

Fierce, certainly, and forbidding she was on this February evening.  She lay high on her pillow, tormented by her chronic bronchitis and by rheumatic pain, her brows drawn together, her vigorous hands clasped before her in an evident tension, as though she only restrained herself with difficulty from defying maid, doctor, and her own sense of prudence.

“Well, you have dressed?” she said, sharply, as Julie Le Breton entered her room.

“I did not get your message till I had finished dinner.  And I dressed before dinner.”

Lady Henry looked her up and down, like a cat ready to pounce.

“You didn’t bring me those letters to sign?”

“No, I thought you were not fit for it.”

“I said they were to go to-night.  Kindly bring them at once.”

Julie brought them.  With groans and flinchings that she could not repress, Lady Henry read and signed them.  Then she demanded to be read to.  Julie sat down, trembling.  How fast the hands of Lady Henry’s clock were moving on!